FREE: THE DOOM PATROL #1 (1987)

How good a shape is it in?

i'd say very good. its been stored and bagged the last 25 years. the picture is an actual scan,

25 years? Wow, that's in pretty good shape! Do you know the history behind this particular first issue?

Basically, when this launched in 1987, it had been years since the Doom Patrol had their own comic series. The writer, Paul Kupperberg, helmed this titled with the same team members he introduced in 1977's Showcase #94, and basically had it as a standard superhero series. In addition to having original member Robotman (from the 60's team), he brought Negative Man back (he, Elasti-Girl, and the Chief had all been thought dead during this time). Three new members were introduced, made up of Lodestone (a girl with magnetic powers), Scott Fisher (a young drifter with Leukemia and energy powers), and Karma (a guy who could make people stumble psychically). The series kept this theme going, despite declining sales, and when DC decided to hand over the series to a new writer in 1989, Kupperberg, at the new writer's request, killed off the characters the incoming writer didn't want to use--and so during DC's 1989 "Invasion!" event, Celsius (a member Kupperberg created in the 70's) and Scott Fisher were killed, while Karma left the team, as he was a fugitive from the law (he never came back until 1991's War of the Gods event, where he was a Suicide Squad member). The Negative spirit left Negative Woman's body, while Lodestone went into a coma. Tempest stopped being an active member and became the team's doctor. And that is what was set up for the incoming new writer of the book--Grant Morrison, who turned the title into a really weird and surreal book, one that was one of the most successful of DC's first books to be put under their new Vertigo imprint.